Speaker 1: Hello, Burden followers and fans. This is Steve Fishman and
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to introduce you to another great true
Speaker 1: crime listen Smoke Screen My Friend the serial Killer. This
Speaker 1: isn't just any story. This is a story of my
Speaker 1: real life, first hand experience, and it's as terrifying as
Speaker 1: it is fascinating. It begins with a simple car ride.
Speaker 1: It's the seventies. I'm a young journalist hitchhiking and I
Speaker 1: get picked up by a friendly, soft spoken stranger with
Speaker 1: a charming Southern accent. But behind that charm hides a dark,
Speaker 1: chilling secret. What I wouldn't find out until later was
Speaker 1: that this stranger was a serial killer, hunting for his
Speaker 1: next victim among hitchhikers. Smoke Screen My Friend the serial
Speaker 1: Killer is available now wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: if you're a subscriber to The Binge, you can enjoy
Speaker 1: all episodes ad free today. Here's a sneak peek a
Speaker 1: quick warning before we start. This show contains descriptions of
Speaker 1: sexual violence and murder. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your first big break as a journalist.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, it's nineteen seventy five. I'm a college dropout.
Speaker 1: My dad has recently kicked me out of the house,
Speaker 1: and I'm an intern at this small newspaper in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: which means I get the pizza and the coffee. I
Speaker 1: work weekends and do anything I can to get my
Speaker 1: byline in the newspaper. Now, I love being in the newsroom.
Speaker 1: It's full of life. I mean typewriters, police scanners, people shouting,
Speaker 1: and in the back of the newsroom there's a kind
Speaker 1: of closet with these newswire machines, and all day and
Speaker 1: all night they found out breaking news stories. And when
Speaker 1: there's an important story, bells ring one or two for
Speaker 1: a minorly important story, to maybe a dozen bells for
Speaker 1: say the invasion of a country or for big local news.
Speaker 1: So one day I'm in the newsroom and the bells
Speaker 1: start ringing like crazy. I rush over and watch as
Speaker 1: the machine prints out this story. A man has just
Speaker 1: confessed to the cops that he committed a series of
Speaker 1: rapes and murders, crimes they didn't even know existed. And
Speaker 1: he's a local man, the serial killer next door. Then
Speaker 1: it prints the guy's name. Wait a second, I know
Speaker 1: this guy, and it makes me realize I came close
Speaker 1: to being a victim myself.
Speaker 2: I was looking for a hit child, potential red victor.
Speaker 1: This is my friend, the serial killer. I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1: Since starting out at the Norwich Bulletin, that small Connecticut paper,
Speaker 1: I've had a long journalism career. One Awards covered a
Speaker 1: lot of big, dark stories. The serial killer, son of
Speaker 1: Sam opened up to me. So did the guy behind
Speaker 1: the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernie Madoff. But this
Speaker 1: story about the serial killer I knew, the serial killer
Speaker 1: I became friendly with, was different. It was personal, and
Speaker 1: in a sense, it's where journalism began for me. This
Speaker 1: story has haunted me for years, for decades, really, which
Speaker 1: is why for a long time I resisted it. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to revisit this territory. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: think about the horror of the serial killer's crimes. But
Speaker 1: there was another reason I resisted. I'm afraid my younger
Speaker 1: self got this story wrong, and I haven't wanted to
Speaker 1: revisit that either until now. Episode one. Local Man.
Speaker 2: All right, so take me back to the very beginning
Speaker 2: where this story.
Speaker 1: Starts, well, probably in my parents' basement in suburban New Jersey.
Speaker 1: I just dropped out of car all those discussions about
Speaker 1: enlightenment poetry, and you know, whatever had stopped feeling exciting
Speaker 1: to me certainly stopped feeling important. And anyway, dropping out
Speaker 1: was kind of a thing in the seventies find yourself, remember,
Speaker 1: So at first where I found myself was in my parents' house,
Speaker 1: diligently trying to be a writer. My parents had this
Speaker 1: basement kind of had small windows, so it was always
Speaker 1: kind of gloomy, and they had this wet bar that
Speaker 1: they never used. It had like a blue for micah countertop,
Speaker 1: and that's where I set up my office. Every day.
Speaker 1: I write these short stories out by long hand ardent accounts.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know teenage romance in the style
Speaker 1: of who was then my favorite writer, Hemingway. Listen, my
Speaker 1: parents were not enthusiastic about my current lifestyle choice. My
Speaker 1: father in particular, had no idea what the hell I
Speaker 1: was doing. He wore a suit every day he worked
Speaker 1: in the city. He commuted to a skyscraper, and every
Speaker 1: now and then he would thump down these stairs and
Speaker 1: he'd say to me, so, when are you going to
Speaker 1: be done? When are you going to be published these
Speaker 1: short stories. It was as if he was asking me, like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you doing. I think he kind
Speaker 1: of thought I was pulling a stunt to him. You know,
Speaker 1: I was avoiding being an adult, and then one day
Speaker 1: he cracks.
Speaker 2: What do you mean he cracks?
Speaker 1: Well, it must have been a weekend. I remember he
Speaker 1: sat me down at our breakfast table. He's backly by
Speaker 1: the sun, so he's got this kind of fuzzy halo
Speaker 1: effect on him, and he tells me I have to
Speaker 1: leave the house. I have to leave home. And then
Speaker 1: he starts to cry.
Speaker 2: Wait, so he is telling you to leave the house,
Speaker 2: but that he's crying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's confusing. It was confusing. Then it confuses me.
Speaker 1: Now I have this reaction like he's crying, so I
Speaker 1: got to comfort him. It's all right, dad, I understand.
Speaker 1: I'll go pack a few things. I think the idea
Speaker 1: for him of tossing me out of my childhood home
Speaker 1: must have seemed sadistic, which in a way it was.
Speaker 1: But he had this idea that at nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: I should be on my way to taking on responsibilities.
Speaker 1: So my dad hustles me into the car and drives me.
Speaker 1: I think it was like fifteen minutes away and says basically,
Speaker 1: all right, here you are and dumps me on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: And in my memory, he just leaves me on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk to hitchhike. And the truth is, you know, I
Speaker 1: was okay with that. Frankly, I hated being in that basement.
Speaker 1: I knew I had to get out of that dungeon.
Speaker 1: I had needed to leave college, and now I needed
Speaker 1: to leave the suburbs. I mean, if I was going
Speaker 1: to write anything, I needed to find something to write about.
Speaker 1: So there I am on the side of that road.
Speaker 1: I stick out my thumb. You have to remember that
Speaker 1: back then, it's like nineteen seventy five, it's just not
Speaker 1: such a big deal to hitchhike. It's a way to
Speaker 1: get around, especially if you don't have a car, which
Speaker 1: I didn't. I start getting rides and soon I land
Speaker 1: that internship at that daily newspaper in Norwich, Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: you know, I figured Emmingway had been a journalist too,
Speaker 1: And at that newspaper is where the course of my
Speaker 1: directionless life changes forever. I mean, I will never forget
Speaker 1: the first time I walked into this newspaper. It's like
Speaker 1: eight o'clock at night. The town is totally dead. But
Speaker 1: I walk into the paper's office, which is on the
Speaker 1: second floor, and the place is lit up like a ballpark.
Speaker 1: So remember this is back before everyone is on the internet.
Speaker 1: People still trust journalists. Newspapers are booming. I mean I
Speaker 1: could hear it all the clatter of typing and yelling.
Speaker 1: It was really vibrant. It was really alive. And then
Speaker 1: I sit down with the managing editor in his little office. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, seemed really old to me at the
Speaker 1: time though he was twenty eight. And the managing editor
Speaker 1: seems confused. I'm not really sure he knew that the
Speaker 1: paper had an internship program, so he kind of ignores me.
Speaker 1: He sits across the desk, goes about his business, and
Speaker 1: gets on the phone with one of his cop buddies,
Speaker 1: because I think this guy really wanted to be a
Speaker 1: cop more than a journalist. And as I'm sitting there,
Speaker 1: he's got this cop on the line and he's holding
Speaker 1: forth and they're having a grand old time. And then
Speaker 1: I overhear the cop who's on the other end of
Speaker 1: the line revealed the name of a dead person so
Speaker 1: that the paper can include it. Before deadline. And now
Speaker 1: this editor, my future boss, stands up and yells across
Speaker 1: the newsroom to the reporter who's covering homicides do you
Speaker 1: have the name of that dead guy yet? And then
Speaker 1: he turns to me and his face breaks into a
Speaker 1: wicked smile. As I would later find out, the boss
Speaker 1: loved trauma. He loved competition, he loved journalism, and he
Speaker 1: loved journalism prizes. I took it all in. This did
Speaker 1: not feel like college. It felt like there were steaks,
Speaker 1: there were deadlines, there were dead bodies, and so I'm
Speaker 1: thinking this is going to be fun. So now I
Speaker 1: fall into the routine of the newspaper, and also I
Speaker 1: keep hit jriking. Sometimes the rides are great. You would
Speaker 1: get these mothers who would have their children in the
Speaker 1: back seat, or you know, young hippies and mini buses
Speaker 1: who would offer me drugs, and also you know dreams
Speaker 1: of changing my life, like buying a van and painting
Speaker 1: it purple and driving across America. And then there were
Speaker 1: other kinds of rides. One time, a couple of guys
Speaker 1: took me to the end of a dirt road and
Speaker 1: right before they steal my backpack, one of them says
Speaker 1: to me, don't you know you shouldn't hitchhike. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: willfully oblivious, but I figure I've been lucky enough. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep hitch shaking. One weekend, it must have been
Speaker 1: around the fall of nineteen seventy five, I just turned
Speaker 1: twenty and I need to get back to Norwich from Boston,
Speaker 1: where i'd been visiting friend. So here I am again
Speaker 1: on the side of the road, thumb out and waiting
Speaker 1: for a ride.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the moment when the car picked you up?
Speaker 1: So I was on the side of the road and
Speaker 1: there's a saber. The car, in my memory is kind
Speaker 1: of a green, you know, a sedan, like a nice
Speaker 1: enough car pulled up and I was just really happy.
Speaker 1: But there's this guy, like nice enough. He had a
Speaker 1: kind of like a bit of a drawl. He seemed
Speaker 1: to be kind of my size, kind of red orange hair.
Speaker 1: He probably was ten fifteen years older than me at
Speaker 1: the time. I tell him I'm going to Norwich and
Speaker 1: I'm lucky. He says he's from Norwich and he knows
Speaker 1: a shortcut. Nice guy tells me his nickname is red
Speaker 1: like his hair. So he seemed like a little bit
Speaker 1: like a stranger, but not like strange, but a stranger.
Speaker 1: And we kind of fell into conversation about like, so
Speaker 1: where are you from what do you do? And he says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of an electrician, but you know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get on my feet. I said, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: easy always. He said, well that's you know, I just
Speaker 1: him out of prison. So that's both like a conversation stopper.
Speaker 1: And now I'm thinking, wow, this could be a story,
Speaker 1: you know, like feature a guy just coming out of
Speaker 1: prison reintegration into society. Now I'm trying to draw him
Speaker 1: out about it, and would you be open to doing
Speaker 1: a story about it? And he says sure, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: I mean he's a guy who's articulate, he's friendly, he's open.
Speaker 1: Fifteen twenty minutes go by, and we're getting to my destination.
Speaker 1: I jock down his contact information. The car stops. I
Speaker 1: reach for the door handle and it doesn't open. The
Speaker 1: handle just doesn't work. I turned quickly see what the
Speaker 1: hell's going on, and I feel panic taking over. We're
Speaker 1: going to come back to that ride, but first I
Speaker 1: need to introduce you to a guy in Miami.
Speaker 3: My name's Ed O'Donnell.
Speaker 1: I'm an attorney now. It's June nineteen seventy six. Ed
Speaker 1: O'Donnell is a prosecutor in Miami, Florida, where something strange
Speaker 1: is about to happen in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: The case started as a rape case. He got basically
Speaker 3: caught in the air.
Speaker 1: So the alleged rapist is awaiting his bond hearing to
Speaker 1: see if he'll get bail. Before the hearing starts, the
Speaker 1: suspect motions to an officer in the courtroom, and the
Speaker 1: officer in uniform walks over, clearly annoyed. Is this important,
Speaker 1: he says. The suspect replies, is important.
Speaker 3: He started wanting to talk to the uniform guy about murders.
Speaker 3: And you know, the uniform guys are just that they
Speaker 3: don't take statements. They contacted homicide.
Speaker 1: The suspect is brought from the bond hearing to a
Speaker 1: couple of homicide detectives.
Speaker 3: And they came to me and told me that this
Speaker 3: guy wants to confess to these murders. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: what you know, let them confess. You know, you never
Speaker 3: know people confess the things they didn't do. But let's
Speaker 3: find out.
Speaker 1: The detectives give the guy a notepad. On it, he
Speaker 1: writes four names of people, two boys, a girl, and
Speaker 1: a young woman. The detectives don't recognize any of these names.
Speaker 1: The suspect tells the cops to go check missing persons.
Speaker 1: One of these detectives, this guy named Charlie's Atra Palak,
Speaker 1: heads over to the missing person's desk. He starts with
Speaker 1: the two boys the suspect mentioned.
Speaker 4: I said, well, I'm looking for two kids.
Speaker 3: They're together.
Speaker 4: And I said, you got anything like that, I mean,
Speaker 4: whether the detectives had to be sitting there. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: he's got a case like that.
Speaker 3: He said, we thought they ran away that, so I
Speaker 3: don't think they did.
Speaker 1: Okay, consider this scene for a moment. Here is a
Speaker 1: suspect caught in the act of rape who now wants
Speaker 1: to voluntarily confess to being a serial killer. The murders
Speaker 1: he wants to claim are not active cases. They're not
Speaker 1: even cold cases. No one knew these were murders to
Speaker 1: solve until he starts talking.
Speaker 4: Following interviews being videotaped at to Day County Public Safety
Speaker 4: Departments located at thirteen to twenty Northwest fourteenth Street, Miami Dade, County, Florida,
Speaker 4: Room five eighteen on June seventeen, if I think seventy six,
Speaker 4: starting at approximately eight pm.
Speaker 1: They've brought the suspect to a kind of TV studio
Speaker 1: they have at the police station. It's typically used to
Speaker 1: record training sessions, but they've decided to use it to
Speaker 1: film these confessions. They will be one of the first
Speaker 1: ever videotape murdered confessions in US history, and much of
Speaker 1: this tape has never been heard before. The suspect goes
Speaker 1: willingly without his lawyer.
Speaker 5: And sir, would you identify yourself by name? Is prov.
Speaker 1: On the video. The two homicide detectives face the suspect,
Speaker 1: Robert F. Carr, the third. They're just a couple of
Speaker 1: feet apart. Remember it's the seventies. One cop looks mod
Speaker 1: with a mustache and bangs kind of Beatles style. The
Speaker 1: suspect is smoking. There's a clock on the wall showing
Speaker 1: the time and dated the recording. Behind the suspect is
Speaker 1: a blackboard, as if it's a classroom. The two detectives
Speaker 1: called the suspect by his first name, Bob, like their pals.
Speaker 5: Should you talk to me anything, what you say, Ken,
Speaker 5: and we'll be introduced into everything court against you. You
Speaker 5: understand that, Bob, if you want an attorney to represent
Speaker 5: you at this time or anytime, if you're in questioning,
Speaker 5: you're intalitled to such constant.
Speaker 2: You understand that.
Speaker 1: That's so.
Speaker 3: You know, he was obviously advised of his rights and
Speaker 3: told that no promises could be made to him. You
Speaker 3: know anything he told us, and we made it real explicit.
Speaker 3: You know, we're gonna we're gonna find out whether all
Speaker 3: this is true. Boy, he unloaded. I'll tell you that
Speaker 3: they'd asked the questions, he'd answer them, and then he'd
Speaker 3: go he you missed this, or he'd give you more.
Speaker 3: I've never seen anything like it. And forty years later,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, I've never seen anything like it since.
Speaker 3: And I've done a lot of homicide work.
Speaker 1: On the tape. One detective asks Bob a question.
Speaker 5: Well, Corn your attention to March nineteen seventy six. Do
Speaker 5: you have an occasion of being the Daye County area.
Speaker 6: Yes, as there as I can figure. I arrived in
Speaker 6: the Dade County area in Miami on March twenty fifth
Speaker 6: from Connecticut, and on arriving in Miami, I perceived because
Speaker 6: certain fighting said, I considered to be necessary in the
Speaker 6: crime that I'm planned to commit. What kind of clime?
Speaker 6: When did you play like many? When you came down
Speaker 6: althoad kidnappen Right. I knew that I was going to
Speaker 6: take a trip. I knew that I was going to
Speaker 6: Mississippi on this trip.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: I proceeded to make a list of what items I
Speaker 6: thought I would need in order to make this trip.
Speaker 6: And every time I thought of something, I was guided
Speaker 6: on a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: He's making a shopping list.
Speaker 6: I knew the night that was that was that the
Speaker 6: sight of it would writing somebody.
Speaker 5: It had to be chrome so that it would show
Speaker 5: it and them life. Uh.
Speaker 6: I needed rope, gasoline, can goods, UH, paper.
Speaker 1: Towels and uh.
Speaker 6: First on this list of items was uh the connect
Speaker 6: the door handle on the right hand side of the car.
Speaker 1: The door handle disconnected on purpose.
Speaker 2: I was looking for a hitchhi potential.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: There many victims that grabbed the door hand. That seems
Speaker 6: to be.
Speaker 5: Not a reaction for everybody.
Speaker 6: That's the first thought.
Speaker 5: Grab the ball handle, try to get out.
Speaker 6: The minute the ball handle doesn't work, Like was like,
Speaker 6: I don't know what to doing it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do when it was me
Speaker 1: in that seat. So there I am in Connecticut, hitch shiking,
Speaker 1: about to get out of that green sedan, and I'm
Speaker 1: grabbing the door handle, but nothing happens, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: care hatch and I freeze.
Speaker 2: What are you thinking in this moment?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm thinking at all. But if I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking what the hell is going on and what
Speaker 1: is going to happen? Except that this guy seems nice.
Speaker 1: We had a nice conversation. He's from the same town
Speaker 1: where I live, and so for a moment I'm on
Speaker 1: the edge of panic. But before it escalates, this nice
Speaker 1: guy interrupts. He's almost apologetic. He says, oh, sorry, there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with the door handle. I gotta get it fixed.
Speaker 1: It's warm out and the car window is open. I
Speaker 1: reach my arm out and open it from outside. I
Speaker 1: shall goodbye and then hustle along. I push that really
Speaker 1: weird moment out of my mind and I start thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, I need a feature story for the week.
Speaker 1: This guy told me he was in a rehab program
Speaker 1: for ex cons. He'd gotten a job at a gas station,
Speaker 1: and I think that might be a story. A local
Speaker 1: man trying to reintegrate into society after prison. When I
Speaker 1: get back to the newsroom, I track down the supervisor
Speaker 1: of this rehab program, and the supervisor gets on the
Speaker 1: phone and he says, do you know what this guy
Speaker 1: did to get into jail? And I realize I don't.
Speaker 1: I hadn't asked him. You know, I'm still an inexperienced journalist.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to know, he says, in other words,
Speaker 1: no story. Kind of amazing to me now that I
Speaker 1: didn't push to find out what crime could be so
Speaker 1: awful that this supervisor would veto an interview. So that
Speaker 1: was it. And then you know, you had that kind
Speaker 1: of gray metal desk, and I pulled out a bottom
Speaker 1: drawer night and I slipped his name and number into
Speaker 1: a folder and put his name on the tab of
Speaker 1: the folder, Robert Carr, and kind of forgot about it.
Speaker 1: Months go by and I start getting assignments everything from
Speaker 1: high school football games to a highly competitive local easter
Speaker 1: a hunt. I know how that sounds, but I will
Speaker 1: tell you that I felt like I was in the
Speaker 1: thick of it, and I was having a blast, still
Speaker 1: really looking to make a splash. Back then, as I
Speaker 1: think about it now. I was pretty full of myself.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty eager for the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: see how important I was, or you know, going to be,
Speaker 1: and that noisy little newsroom felt like the place where
Speaker 1: I was going to prove myself. Looking back, I realized
Speaker 1: that I was very ambitious and maybe blinded by my ambition.
Speaker 1: I think that explains what happens next. The newsflash comes
Speaker 1: across the wire, the one with the bells ringing like crazy,
Speaker 1: the one that reports on the local man arrested for
Speaker 1: a series of rapes and murders. I'm standing in front
Speaker 1: of the wire machine in my tie. The newspaper had
Speaker 1: a strict dress code. I can read this story as
Speaker 1: the teletype is spitting it out, and I start to
Speaker 1: get more details. It says the man captured his victim's hitchhiking,
Speaker 1: and then it prints his name, and I shiver, Robert F. Carr,
Speaker 1: the third. I go back to my filing cabin and
Speaker 1: then I pull out the contact info I'd stuffed in
Speaker 1: there months before. It matches, and suddenly I realize I'd
Speaker 1: taken a ride with a serial killer, A serial killer
Speaker 1: who got his victim's hitchhiking, who had trapped them with
Speaker 1: a disconnected door handle. I had sat in that seat,
Speaker 1: had a friendly conversation with him, and then I had
Speaker 1: tried to open that door handle, just like his victims
Speaker 1: must have done. And for a moment, my mind is
Speaker 1: back there in that car with what I now know
Speaker 1: to be a serial killer, and I can feel the
Speaker 1: panic rides in my stomach. But then my thoughts turn elsewhere,
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking this could be the break that I've
Speaker 1: been looking for. This could be a big story, and
Speaker 1: if I landed, it could win awards. And you know what,
Speaker 1: my dad would understand awards, And so me, ambitious twenty
Speaker 1: year old me who duck, kidnapping or worse, is thrilled.
Speaker 1: What a break for my career. I'd met a local
Speaker 1: man who is a confessed serial killer, and I have
Speaker 1: his phone number. I dial the number, A woman answers.
Speaker 1: I tell her I'm calling from the Norwich Bulletin and
Speaker 1: I say missus Carr. She says yes, and I say
Speaker 1: I have to come over and see you. That's next time.
Speaker 1: I'm on My Friend the serial Killer for the full story,
Speaker 1: search for smokescreen My Friend the Serial Killer. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts to listen now. My Friend the Serial
Speaker 1: Killer is a production of Orbit Media in association with
Speaker 1: Ron creator and host That's Me, Steve Fishman. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Dan Bobkoff. Our associate producer and production coordinator
Speaker 1: is Austin Smith. Editorial consulting by Annie Avilese, fact check
Speaker 1: Katherine Newhan. Our mixer and sound designer is Scott Somerville
Speaker 1: from Sony Music Entertainment. Our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch
Speaker 1: and Katherine Saint Louis. Additional reporting by Daniel Bates, Ben
Speaker 1: furderherd Andy Tibau, and Francisco Alvarado. Special thanks to Cassie
Speaker 1: Epps at Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut